Elements
by Celandine Brandybuck
Summary: The story of Nerdanel and Fëanor, to be told in a series of vignettes. Work in progress. On hiatus.
1. Flame

**I. Flame**   
  
He had watched her for the whole of the year he had been there, her father's apprentice. The king's son. Why did he stare so? Nerdanel knew that her appearance was unusual – copper-colored hair was almost unknown among the Elves – but surely it did not warrant such a reaction, and of other beauties she had none. She ignored him and spoke to Mahtan, wiping the sweat from her forehead, for she had been at her forge.  
  
"You sent for me?"  
  
"Fëanor is having some difficulties with the gold leaf," Mahtan told her, "getting it beaten to the even fineness I need for gilding this piece. Can you show him how?"  
  
She looked at Fëanor, now, and he flushed, seemingly embarrassed that she should be called upon to assist him in such a task. "Come with me; I work two chambers away, and there we will not disturb my father."  
  
He followed her silently. When they reached the other room he stopped short in the doorway for a moment before stepping through. He walked about the whole of the chamber, examining everything that cluttered the shelves and angled against the walls, leaning close but not venturing to touch; nor did he hurry.  
  
Nerdanel observed him as he studied her work. Fëanor's face revealed little, but his eyes were wide and dark when he returned to where she waited, and he bowed slightly.  
  
"I am. . . most impressed," he said. "I had no idea you had such ability."  
  
"Which do you like most?" she asked. "Though I know it is unfair to ask that when you have only had a moment's look at each."  
  
"This one, I think," said Fëanor.  
  
The piece he pointed at was not Nerdanel's own favorite, but she thought she knew why it drew him. It was a complex sculpture of interlocking oval rings of different types of stone, so arranged as to make it difficult for the eye to easily follow any one of them around. Although at times she was seized with the impulse to create such works, attempting to express an idea or emotion directly through form, it felt more natural to her to sculpt figures that were true to life, sometimes using paint and fabric to enhance their likeness, sometimes leaving the stone or metal unadorned.  
  
Fëanor had spoken again while she mused, asking, "Do you always work alone?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"I have too," he said. Implicit in his words she heard the suggestion that this might not always be the case in future.  
  
She turned to her worktable. "Gold leaf, that is what you wish to learn from me?"  
  
"It is," and again there was something indefinable in Fëanor's voice, something ambiguous in his choice of phrase, that disturbed her.  
  
"I can show you my technique," Nerdanel said, "but all it really requires is patience, as you will see."  
  
He watched as she wielded the hammer, deftly flattening a nugget of the pure metal to a thin sheet, changing to a wooden mallet at the last, which she found gave her greater control with less chance of tearing the delicate leaf. She held it up, fluttering, to show him. "Now you try."  
  
For all that Mahtan had complained that Fëanor was deficient in this skill, the young Elf's blows were quick and precise, and he soon had produced a more than acceptable result, upon which Nerdanel complimented him. Fëanor bowed his thanks, then said that he feared he was taking her away from her own work, and that he must return to his. He was gone so rapidly that she was left wondering whether he had really been there, or if she had imagined it. But there lay her piece of gold leaf on the table.  
  
If Nerdanel had thought that this encounter might stop Fëanor's eyes from following her whenever they were in the same room, she was soon disabused of the idea. He did not speak to her again, though, for many days.  
  
"Nerdanel."  
  
He stood in the doorway of her workroom. She had not heard his knock, and he had opened the heavy oak door in silence. It troubled her, that he would do so. His apologetic smile sat oddly on his fair face. "I made this for you," he said, stepping in to place something on the nearest shelf, and vanished again, the door closed behind him.  
  
She went to look at it, still warm from the forges. A jewel, it was, of clear crystal but shimmering red within as if with fire. The nearest to it she had ever seen were some of Aulë's make.  
  
That evening it was she who approached him. "How did you create it?"  
  
Fëanor smiled. "I will show you, if you like."  
  
And he did. For a year, two years, three, he shared his methods and skills, and she hers. She asked, one day, whether he had dissembled in his inability to make fine gold leaf, but he only looked at her. Later as she looked back it was heat that suffused her memory. Heat, and especially the flame of the forges. At that time she worked most with metals – silver, bronze, gold – and their lambent gleam cast a glow over everything she did or said, in Fëanor's company.  
  
As she watched him solve each new challenge, the fire reflected in his eyes and edged his dark hair with light. When his attempts were successful, he sang before the forge in a rich voice, rejoicing, and watching him Nerdanel thought that he had kindled a secret flame in her own heart. He never asked for her help, but of her own volition she assisted him often, and he seemed happy to accept her aid and advice.  
  
One day, when Fëanor had succeeded in making his fairest jewel yet, shot through with greens and silvers so that even in the red hearthlight it was as the sparkle of Telperion shining on water, he turned to Nerdanel. "The sea is changeable," he said, "but this gem is imperishable as is my feeling for you."  
  
Nerdanel thought to herself that all things perish, in the end, but she understood what he was asking. "Yes," she said to the question he had not spoken.  
  
For a wedding-gift to him she made a sculpture. She had thought to make an image of Fëanor himself, but found that she could not convey the fire and strength of his spirit through any metal she knew, not copper, nor bronze, nor iron. Remembering the first piece of hers he had admired, instead she turned to stone, a red marble veined with white. When she had finished carving, it flared out from a narrow base in rippling waves, like drapery in a breeze, or the petals of some strange flower, or flames burning. His gift to her was a handful of his own jewels, set into a necklace.  
  
"But they are not so beautiful as you, for you are alive," he whispered to her that night, and her heart burned within her at his words.  
  



	2. Stone

**II. Stone **

When Nerdanel conceived, Fëanor became strangely agitated. It took her some time to understand why: that he worried that she might be like his mother Miriel and pour all the strength of her spirit into their child, leaving none for herself. She listened to his fears but told him that he need not be concerned, for if his was a spirit of fire that had burnt away his mother's, her own was like the stone she worked so well, and no child of theirs could wear it all away.

Maedhros was born just as the light of Laurelin was waning, and that of Telperion waxing. Nerdanel held his tiny form to her breast and Fëanor sat by her side, his expression proud of his fine son, though he asked, "Should he be so small?"

Nerdanel laughed. "Had he been much larger, I do not see how he could have been born. Do you not remember what your brothers were like at their births?"

"I was not there." Fëanor's expression was closed, and Nerdanel sighed to herself. She had not fully understood the rift in the house of Finwë until after she and Fëanor had already wed, and wished that it could be bridged. She hoped that perhaps the birth of this child would help.

For a time it seemed that it might. Finwë came to see his grandson; his wife Indis did not accompany him, but their sons Fingolfin and Finarfin did and made such fuss over their nephew as should have softened the hardest heart. Yet after their departure Fëanor held to his old disdain for his father's other family, and the arrival of other sons did not change matters, especially when his half-brothers soon also had children of their own.

This scorn was out of keeping with Fëanor's character, Nerdanel thought, for it was a cold antipathy, and Fëanor was more like to be hot-tempered. Shortly after Maglor's birth Fëanor had begun a series of experiments, trying a new approach to his jewel-making, and when they failed he smashed all the faulty gems in his rage. His anger worried Nerdanel, and she sought by her advice to calm him. When they had first begun to work together he had listened to her suggestions willingly, but as he ventured into techniques that none had tried before, he took pride in his unique abilities, and Nerdanel had imperceptibly shifted from assistant to observer of Fëanor's work. He continued, though, to advise her when she asked for it, and sometimes when she did not. Now when she spoke of what he did, he listened with less and less attention.

Not that he ceased to spend time with her, or their sons as their family grew, and a look from him could still send heat along her veins. But he seemed often impatient to return to his fire and forge, his gems and metals.

She realized just how estranged they were becoming from what seemed a little thing. Always when Fëanor created a new type of gem, he had brought it to Nerdanel first, sharing his success with her. After Caranthir's birth, when she was once again adjusting to the presence of an infant and all the demands that brought, Fëanor ceased to show her his work daily as had been his custom. It took Nerdanel some time to realize it, distracted as she was by their children, but one night, after the rest of the household was abed, she asked.

"You are always preoccupied, my wife," said Fëanor to her. "What you do in raising our sons is worthy of your time – I do not question that – but I would have my work receive no attention from you, rather than less than its due."

Nerdanel's expression hardened. "And what of my work, Fëanor? Is it only to breed and bear and bring up your sons? I love them greatly, mistake me not, but had I known that I should lose all time to practice my craft, while you would not make the same renunciation, I would not have agreed to have so many." She tried to read his eyes, and found only the reflection of the lamplight there.

Fëanor was silent for a time. Then he said, "I did not realize you felt so. Shall I take the eldest three and begin training them in craftsmanship, perhaps? That would lessen the burden on you, and they are old enough to be of some help."

"If they are interested," said Nerdanel, "that would be a reasonable plan. You can ask them each tomorrow."

Maedhros, Maglor, and Celegorm all seized on their father's suggestion, although Maglor asked Nerdanel in private if he could still practice another craft later. She assured him that he could, and with that he seemed happy to spend time with Fëanor and his brothers. Curufin was old enough to want to join them, but Fëanor ruled this out for the time being. Nerdanel allowed Curufin to help her with simple tasks in her own workrooms, which she was now again able to visit regularly, and he showed a good deal of aptitude for working with metal.

Now that Nerdanel was less overwhelmed by their brood – larger than any other family among the Noldorin – Fëanor began suggesting to her that they have one more child. "A daughter, perhaps," he said persuasively. "Would you not like a daughter?"

She would like to have a little girl, but after five sons she felt that she had borne enough; and what if a sixth child were another son? Despite her reservations, though, Nerdanel allowed herself to be convinced by Fëanor's words. He courted her, almost as he had done when they were young, and prevailed upon her to conceive.

Soon after the child quickened, Nerdanel became concerned. The movements of this one seemed very different from those of her previous children. She sought out the advice of Yavanna, Vána, and Estë, hoping that the Valier might know more than herself.

One by one, they gravely examined her; then all three looked at her and smiled. Yavanna said, "Do you not know? You carry not one, but two babes this time. I could hear the two heartbeats quite distinctly."

"What?" Nerdanel had never heard of such a thing.

"Indeed, it is true," Vána assured her. "It is not unusual among the _kelvar_, the animals, even if we have not seen it before among the Children of Ilúvatar. It would seem that both your spirit and Fëanor's must be exceptionally strong."

"Will it cause trouble, when it is time for them to be born?" asked Nerdanel.

"I do not see why it should," said Yavanna.

Estë added, "The limbs of your children are not long enough to become entangled as can happen with deer, or lambs, or some others of the _kelvar_. But if you are concerned, one of us could be with you for the birth."

"I will come to you if you need aid," Vána said.

"Thank you," said Nerdanel. "I will send Fëanor for you, if it seems necessary." Much relieved, she returned home.

This labor began like all her others, with mild twinges that quickly became painful contractions of all the muscles through her belly. Nerdanel sent Curufin to fetch his father while she went to the room she had prepared for the birth. While waiting for her husband, she walked, hoping to hasten the process. It seemed a long time before Fëanor arrived, and when he did, his expression showed none of the happiness Nerdanel expected, but rather impatience.

"How long will it yet be?" were the first words from his mouth.

Nerdanel bit back a sharp response, instead replying, "That is something even the Valar could not tell you. It will take as long as it takes. Do you not wish to be with me and support me at this birth, as at all the others, and greet your new babes as they take breath?"

"The gem on which I have been working will be marred if I do not return quickly to complete it," said Fëanor, not answering her question.

"And what of that?" Nerdanel said, her patience breaking at last. "You wished me to bear another child, you persuaded me to it, and indeed there will be two more. None other among all our kin, not any of the Noldor, or Vanyar, or Teleri, has ever borne so many children. Now it seems you do not care, for all your pride in their numbers? Well, then, go back to your gems. I do not want you here; I only ask that you send for Vána and ask her to attend me, as she offered."

She turned away, and after a moment she heard Fëanor leave the room. A spasm seized her and she clutched at the carved marble mantlepiece to support herself. Her heart felt as cold and heavy as the stone beneath her fingers as she waited. Her sons needed her, and the two children coming now; she would remain for them. For now.


End file.
